The investigation into why a cable mysteriously broke on the Arecibo Observatory has begun

Aug 15, 2020
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Thanks for providing that decent photo of the broken rope. I'd like to see both ends. I'm not highly trained in failures, but the visible end looks to have been heated sufficiently at that location - eg during construction - such that the zinc from the galvanizing process (performed before the rope is 'wound') fused most strands together. With the loss of flexibility at that point, it could have been a brittle-fracture waiting to happen all these years. The few loose strands were probably all that were left to hold the load once the main fused chunk fractured, and they likely broke almost immediately under the sudden load-change.
 
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Aug 15, 2020
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When I saw the condition the great telescope was in I was shocked and saddened that the people there have been neglecting it for years, even way before this alleged mishap I caught a recent photo of it a year ago and it was crumbling and half of the base white color was gone and over growth of bushes were coming through, on space shows for years look great, but it was looking like it should have been condemned, you'd never see that in the US, I say instead of giving them the money to fix (possible motive) move it to the US!
 
Sep 16, 2020
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When I saw the condition the great telescope was in I was shocked and saddened that the people there have been neglecting it for years, even way before this alleged mishap I caught a recent photo of it a year ago and it was crumbling and half of the base white color was gone and over growth of bushes were coming through, on space shows for years look great, but it was looking like it should have been condemned, you'd never see that in the US, I say instead of giving them the money to fix (possible motive) move it to the US!

Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.
 
Nov 21, 2020
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I say instead of giving them the money to fix (possible motive) move it to the US!
it would be a short move, only 0.00000 meters.
i wonder what your "possible motive" is for casting aspersions on the americans responsible for the telescope. it is highly unlikely that they intentionally jeopardized their own livelihoods by sabotaging the telescope.
 
Ari
When I saw the condition the great telescope was in I was shocked and saddened that the people there have been neglecting it for years, even way before this alleged mishap I caught a recent photo of it a year ago and it was crumbling and half of the base white color was gone and over growth of bushes were coming through, on space shows for years look great, but it was looking like it should have been condemned, you'd never see that in the US, I say instead of giving them the money to fix (possible motive) move it to the US!

Arecibo exists because it sits in a dish shaped natural bowl in the hills there in Puerto Rico. To build one similar, you'd have to either do a lot o Earth Moving or else be extremely lucky. The position close to the Equator helps too in what it can look at. Build it further North and you can see more northerly objects, but you lose an awful lot of the Southern ones.

There are two other radio observatories that come close to Arecibo in size and sensitivity. One is in Canada and the other in China. Both are more northern, so Arecibo is a near irreplaceable instrument, even though it's quite old technically these days. I would like to see it rebuilt with new modern equipment.
 

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